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DISCRETIONARY EFFORT AND THE CASE OF THE MYSTERIOUS MR UNDERHILL

‘The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.’

Mahatma Gandhi

Like many people, I opened a bank account when I was a teenager. I still bank with the same business decades later. Relatively few people switch bank accounts. It is called customer inertia. Or status quo bias, if you are a behavioural economist. Apparently, the statistics say that divorce is more likely than changing your bank. Yet on one occasion my dealings with the bank became so difficult over such an apparently small matter, that I very nearly did this most unlikely of things.

I considered myself a good customer, and I was well served with bank accounts. I already had a current, a business and a savings account. Now, with my work regularly taking me abroad, I decided to open a foreign currency bank account as well. As a long-standing customer the initial process was straightforward and I was quickly allocated an account number. However, when my new cheque book arrived at home, I noticed one surprising feature: it had the name Mr Underhill printed on it. Not Mr Woods. I was mystified.

Never mind, I thought. This will not take long to sort out. So I called customer service:

‘Yes it has the correct account number printed on it,’ I responded to the bank representative.

‘And you received it at your home address?’

‘I did.’

‘Well you must have filled in the wrong name when you originally completed the paperwork and applied for the account.’

Hmmm. Okay, I hadn’t expected the operative to take personal responsibility for the mistake, but I wasn’t expecting the bank to blame me either, to the point of suggesting that I had somehow forgotten my own name. And why Underhill, anyway?

Over the next few months I telephoned, emailed, faxed, telephoned, made personal appearances at my bank, and telephoned, all in an effort to fix the issue. Nothing, however, seemed to penetrate the mysterious Kafkaesque procedures of the bank. I couldn’t even cancel the account. And in the meantime the letters to Mr Underhill kept arriving … and arriving.

So there it was. I had apparently reached an impasse. There was nothing for it. Time to bring my long-standing and, until that point, happy relationship with the bank to an end. And then, at last, an epiphany.

I was at the bank where a bank employee was processing a number of transactions for me and, as she went through the process, efficiently and politely, I commented that it was a shame that not everyone in the bank did their job as well. Showing some concern, she asked me if I’d had some issues, and so I explained the difficulties I’d had and the frustration I felt that no one seemed to want to take responsibility.

In just five minutes this helpful person ended six months of unbelievable aggravation. She wasn’t sure what had caused the initial error with my new account or of the process required to fix it. She called several departments explaining that Mr Underhill really didn’t exist, and she reassured colleagues that common sense should prevail, commenting to them that it was highly unlikely that it was the customer’s error.

It wasn’t her job, and it certainly wasn’t her fault, but she fixed the problem anyway and retained a customer. She went beyond the call of duty. She went the extra mile.

Some months later I was doing some work for the same bank and shared the story with a senior director. He was mortified that their processes had failed and that their staff had let both the business and me down. I told him that he had at least one employee he could be proud of. And I told him her name and where she worked.

This person wasn’t expecting any reward when she helped me, and I’m sure this level of customer service wasn’t an isolated incident, but six months later I was delighted to hear that she had been promoted.

Roman Taxis

Many people will recognize the phrase, ‘to go the extra mile’. A few will know that the phrase has its origins in the Bible, and in particular the Sermon on the Mount. At the time, around 28BC, your average, feeling slightly puffed out Roman centurion, could compel a random passer-by to carry the centurion’s belongings for a mille passuum – 1000 paces – also known as a Roman mile. Understandably, people were not that happy at having to take an unplanned detour as a human taxi, carrying someone else’s belongings. Hence the resonance of the part of the sermon where Jesus, according to Matthew 5:41, advises onlookers: ‘If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.’

Over the centuries the phrase ‘going the extra mile’ has become common parlance for doing that little bit (or a lot) extra, going out of your way to be helpful. Just as the employee at the bank had, thankfully, in the case of the mysterious Mr Underhill.

Until my unfortunate experience with the bank, I had given little thought to the notion of going the extra mile. But, having suffered the frustrations of organizational bureaucracy, at first hand, as well as the redeeming power of employee intervention, I began to give the idea more consideration. I paid much more attention to interactions with shop staff. I listened to the way call centre staff dealt with my queries when I needed to speak to them. I observed the way that airline, hotel, restaurant and other service centred employees treated me when I was travelling. And, in particular, I asked other people that I met in the course of my work to tell me about any relevant or related experiences in business.

So, for example, I learnt about the document delivery company where the manager of the local branch has a customer living some distance from the nearest mail collection point, but in the same village as the manager. And every evening the manager drops the customer’s post off for them. The manager doesn’t have to. They just do.

In that same company, people often go out of their way to stop by a person’s house to pick up an item if that customer has missed a collection. And, in extreme winter weather conditions one year, with numerous communities snowed in across the UK, the business managed to keep its operations running; partly because people made the effort, often to their detriment, to get to the company’s premises to pick up the mail. In fact, in some instances, it was more of a challenge to stop employees coming in to work, as the weather was so desperate that the firm wasn’t sure it would be able to get its lorries back out of the depot.

As one company member described it: ‘If something is happening, they will pick up the situation, they will own it. It doesn’t even matter if it is on a weekend, in the middle of the night, whatever it is, this really isn’t a company where you just put your shoes on, turn up at nine o’clock and go home at five.’

Leveraging Your Human Capital

It is easy to see why the idea of employees going the extra mile might interest senior executives, and other managers in organizations. Over the last few years, businesses have battled through some of the toughest trading conditions since World War II. Possibly the most difficult. Many of the developed western economies are overburdened with debt. Attempts to deleverage have weighed heavily on economic and corporate growth. The debt crisis in Greece and fears over the indebtedness of other European countries, for ex­ample, has had a negative impact on sentiment both in the Eurozone and further afield.

Over the decades business has been through distinct stages of competition. Back in the early 20th century, companies competed using mass production techniques – interchangeable parts, continuous assembly lines, and division of labour – to produce high volumes of standardized products. Millions of identical Ford Model-T automobiles rolled out of the Highland Park plant in Michigan, for example. And, from 1914 onwards, they were available in any colour you wanted, so long as it was black. Later on, product variation, marketing and branding became more important factors in obtaining competitive advantage. More recently companies have sought to beat their rivals on price, outsourcing elements of the value chain, and through knowledge and innovation – in the so-called knowledge economy.

Today, it is widely accepted that human capital is one of the most valuable assets an organization possesses. Increasingly it is the quality of the people working in the organization that determines whether it outperforms its competitors and succeeds or fails. Not the price of its products, its manufacturing techniques, or its distribution network – although these are all an important part of the competitive mix.

Organizations are doing business in highly competitive global markets. They rely on the efforts of their staff to build and maintain relationships with their stakeholders, including their customers. Employees have a significant role to play in creating customer loyalty. Talented staff are the catalyst for change in organizations, they help detect threatening market signals, and reshape business models through innovation. An organization’s people are the key to competitive survival and its ability to evolve and create sustainable success.

Capitalizing on human capital is not easy, though. For a start there is the challenge of attracting talented...